Daughters of the Witching Hill (17 page)

"Happy Harvest Home, our Bess," said Anne.

The sweet scent of apple pie reminded me that I'd eaten next to nowt that day, my appetite having failed me till this moment.

"You walked all the way from West Close to bring me a pie?" Wondered how she even baked it, having no oven. I grinned to think of Betty snatching it from the Greenhead kitchen.

"My feet are well sore," my friend complained. "Are you going to let me stand out here till the moon goes down?"

So I invited her inside and built a hearthfire as grand as any of the bonfires on the high hills. Later our John would scold me for wasting so much peat, but it was Harvest Home and I was finally in the mood to make merry. I cut the pie to share and filled two cups to the brim with last year's elderberry wine, potent enough to make the stars spin in the sky.

"How are your girls?" I asked her.

"Off dancing the harvest in, them two." Anne raised her cup to me.

"Wouldn't it be something to be young again?"

In truth, the heady wine almost made it seem within my grasp to travel back through time.

"You were such a shameless one," Anne teased. "Even when you were married. Your husband didn't stand a chance. You were pretty enough to make the Curate forget half of what he was meant to be preaching."

I laughed myself legless at the memory. "And you! With your golden hair. They all said there was no greater beauty in Pendle Forest."

We fell silent then, mourning what was gone and would never return. Seemed unjust, the way the years had slipped away, robbing us of our pleasures, the love and the lust that had seared us.

"God's foot," I said, "doesn't the world grow drearier each year? Times were never so good as when we were young. Remember when the Lord of Misrule bared his bottom to the Church Warden?"

Anne roared, her hand grasping mine. When her laughter died down, she cast her eyes to the ashes in the hearth.

"What's left for us now?" she asked.

"Our children and grandchildren," I said, then regretted my slip of tongue, for Anne was not yet blessed with grandchildren.

"Even our children grow older," she said after a spell. "Least you have your powers. Must be a comfort, knowing you're not just a useless old woman like me."

"Hardly useless! What would Annie do without you?"

"What would she do without
you,
more like." Anne turned to me. "You taught her about them clay pictures—that's the only thing that saved her."

A draught stole in beneath the door, raising my flesh. "She told you?"

"Did you think she'd keep it secret from her own mam? Does your Liza keep secrets from you?"

I sighed, wondering. My own daughter had washed her hands clean of all I'd tried to teach her.

"At least young Assheton is gone to Chester," I said. "God willing, he'll trouble her no more."

"There's the rub, our Bess." The defeat in Anne's voice undid me. "He'll return for Christmas. Only a matter of weeks. Hangs over us, this does. Already Annie's gone off her food. Tom said he'd murder him if he comes round again—what good would that do if Tom gets himself hanged? I'd give anything to be able to protect her the way you did."

The wind carried the sound of a dog baying to the moon.

"What are you saying?" I asked her.

She leaned close. "You taught my girl. Could you not teach me?"

"Anne." My head swam with wine and my own bewilderment. "You never believed in such things." Looking into the depths of her green eyes, I prayed to see her old doubts arise. But she gazed back at me with the zeal of a convert.

"It's true that I don't believe in saints or miracles or any of that gobbledygook. Don't even know if I believe in God. But you were stood right in my cottage when you summoned that dog. It's not a matter of believing—I saw it happen."

"It's no easy path. Remember, you warned me yourself of the dangers, the price to be paid." Anxious, I was, to talk her out of this, for I'd no desire for my best friend to hang for what she was begging me to teach her. What a fuss Liza would raise if Anne became my new apprentice. John would declare that he'd been right all along about Anne having the power to twist me to her will, that she was a witch, that our doom was sealed.

"You know I'd never ask you for anything trifling," Anne said. "I swear I'd pay any price to keep my family safe from young Assheton."

"Our Anne, I'd roast in the worst fires of hell before I'd let that wretch meddle with you and yours."

With a shaking hand, I filled our cups again.

"Even if I were to teach you everything I know, you'll still not be a cunning woman till a spirit comes to you and that can't be hurried or forced, our Anne. It's the spirits who choose, not us. But please let's speak no more of this tonight."

Setting sombre thoughts aside, we emptied the wine flask, finished the apple pie, and reminisced about our youth till our flanks ached from laughter. Anne sang one old song after another, and what did we do then but rush outside to dance in the moonlight like two silly girls. Jig after jig we danced, spinning and swirling till we were dizzy, and then we threw ourselves upon the grass to gaze up at the wheeling stars. Her loosened hair touched mine and our fingers twined together.

With the harvest moon pouring down upon our faces, I gave Anne my word. I promised to teach her of cunning craft and familiars, of blessing and binding. By and by, a spirit might well come to her. My friend and I had shared so many things in our long lives. Why shouldn't we share this?

E
VEN GIVEN EVERYTHING
that came afterward, Anne and I would both treasure that night for the rest of our days. At the ragged end of her life, my Anne would cling to our secret feast like a silk handkerchief, and she would embroider it something fierce to make it even more fantastic. She'd say that we'd shared a magnificent feast at Malkin Tower with sweet butter, cheese and bread, roasted meats, and plentiful wine and beer, all served to us by our familiars, my Tibb and her Fancy, though he had yet to appear to her that night. She would first encounter her spirit toward the end of November when he came in the guise of a black-haired young man.

Speaking of our banquet, she'd say that we'd no fire or even a single candle for light, but that the imps themselves lent us their magical glow, not only Tibb and Fancy, but a host of she-spirits besides. She'd say that some creature that took the shape of a spotted bitch told me, within her own hearing, that she would be granted silver, gold, and great wealth. This was the tale she would live to tell whilst I lay dead. But I am leaping ahead.

During that waning year of 1595, I was careful to keep my meetings with Anne privy, for I'd no wish to upset Liza with her time being so near or to give our John any excuse to fret and moan. Anne and I took to meeting in a copse of trees on Slipper Hill, not far from Malkin Tower, or else I walked to West Close.

In early December I came by Anne's cottage and, finding it empty, walked in the direction of the voices I heard behind the willows and rushes. Anne and Annie were sat on either side of the beck, both of them making clay pictures, for young Assheton was expected back from Chester any day. Mother and daughter jerked their heads in alarm as my shadow fell across them, but then they smiled in their relief to see that it was only me.

Young Annie seemed well jittery as she shaped the clay, but her mam's hands were steady. I thought to myself that it was a good thing Annie didn't have to wrestle with this on her own—she could lose her courage, after all, then it might be too late to save herself.

As the winter sun glinted on the angel-bright hair spilling from her coif, her beauty was enough to dazzle, even whilst she was sat at her grisly task. A married woman of twenty-four, she could pass as a maid of sixteen, she was still so lithe and graceful. I could well understand why Annie was her mother's joy, the shining star of her old age—she was like a mirror in which my Anne could see her own lost youth reflected. Such a fond and fierce look Anne gave her daughter when she reached across the beck to take the half-finished clay manikin from Annie's faltering hands. My friend's brow furrowed, full-determined, as she put on the finishing touches.

For the life of me, I hadn't the nerve to ask them why they were making two clay figures instead of one.

Returning to Malkin Tower, I found John busy lining Jamie's old cradle with sweet-smelling new straw. Our Liza's baby was due this month. Banishing all thought of clay pictures, I gathered clean rags to sew a poppet, no instrument of magic, but a child's blameless toy, with combed flax for hair.

Soon enough Yuletide was upon us and gossip spread like the pox. Robert Assheton had returned to Greenhead feeling miserable and unwell, swearing that Annie Redfearn had bewitched him.

"You swore that Chattox has no powers," our John told me. "Is her daughter now a witch?"

"You promised you wouldn't go on about that anymore," Liza said to him, her hands clutching her pregnant belly. "Please, love, just throw some salt over your shoulder and be done with it."

"This is well serious," John insisted. "That young Assheton told his father to have Chattox and Annie laid in Lancaster Gaol. He wanted them locked up in a place where they'd be glad to bite lice in two with their teeth."

Listening to those words, I could almost see Robert's hate-twisted face. We were in real danger, Anne, Annie, and me. No telling what could happen to us now that young Assheton was spouting on about witchcraft. I seized my wits, picking each word with care.

"Master Robert's nowt but a moonstruck fool," I told John. "The boy should be ashamed of himself, slandering poor folk and all because he tried to have his way with a married woman who can't stand the sight of him."

John shook his head in disbelief. "You still say Chattox is harmless? I saw young Master Assheton's face and if ever there was a hag-ridden soul, it was him. Where would Annie learn witchcraft if not from her mother?"

My skin began to burn with the many secrets I'd kept hidden from my own family. If my son-in-law knew that I had taught both Anne and Annie, would he run to the Constable? Would Liza herself shun me? A tightness closed round my throat as though a collar of cold iron were choking me.

In my silence, Liza spoke. "Our John's right that Chattox and her lot are never up to any good. If she's not a witch, her oldest girl's a thief. It's only folk's goodwill and charity that kept Betty from being dragged off to Lancaster ages ago."

"Enough," I pleaded. "I'll go to West Close and talk to them myself. Find out what this is about."

I rushed past fallow barley fields haunted by crows. St. Stephen's, it was, the day after Christmas, yet bleak as death. When I reached the cottage, I found Tom Redfearn digging out the clogged ditch that ran alongside the road.

"You'll find the women inside," he told me, his face etched with worry.

Anne and her two daughters were knelt round the fire. Eyes streaming, Betty cut onions whilst my friend stirred a pot of thin broth into which the onions would go. Young Annie was slapping down wet clapbread dough on the steaming-hot stones that girded the fire.

"Happy Christmas, Bess." Anne rose to kiss me. "You're just in time to eat with us. When the soup's ready, we'll call Tom inside."

Doting and tender, she turned to smile at Annie who looked anxious as her husband, her skin drained and bloodless. Betty swiped at her onion tears and pulled a face. In a foul mood, she seemed, as though resentful her mother was making it so clear that Annie was the favoured daughter.

"Don't just sit there like a clod, our Betty," came her mother's voice. "Go out and fetch another turve for the fire."

Soon as Betty had tramped out the door, Anne sidled close and spoke low and fast. "Ill talk going round about us, Bess."

"Ill talk indeed," I said, a catch in my throat. "The clay pictures—did anyone see you making them? Just the other day I stumbled by and saw you. Oh, be careful, our Anne."

"He says he won't stop till his father has us arrested." Young Annie spoke in a cold, tight voice. Her hands slammed the sizzling clapbread on the stone till the steam rose, obscuring her face.

"That boy is running round like a madman," said her mother. "We haven't had a moment's peace."

Betty trundled in with the peat, which she dumped in the fire, sending sparks flying over her sister. She looked from Annie to her mother to me, the three of us guilty-faced and silent, gagging on our terror of what lay ahead.

"You were talking about young Assheton." Betty sounded well weary of the things that had been kept from her. She turned to her sister. "Wouldn't it be easier to just give him what he wants so he'll leave the rest of us alone?"

My Anne went dark red as if spoiling to give Betty a right good clouting, when Annie staggered to her feet and threw herself between them. Her young face sagged.

"Speak of the Devil," Annie said.

The four of us listened to the noise of hooves splattering through the mud.

Anne took hold of the fire poker. "You stay inside," she told young Annie. "Never fear. This time we have Tom on hand."

Annie clutched herself. "What if he picks a fight with Tom and Tom gets hauled off for decking him?"